★𝕞𝕒𝕜𝕖 𝕒 𝕨𝕚𝕤𝕙 (𝕒𝕟𝕕 𝕓𝕝𝕠𝕨 𝕠𝕦𝕥 𝕥𝕙𝕖 𝕔𝕒𝕟𝕕𝕝𝕖)★

ch. 10

--flashback--

-todoroki-

Smoky air filled my lungs when we reached the scene. The damage was a lot worse than what I had thought. The building that supposedly held a few dozen elementary students was smack in the middle of the burning city that was slowly being covered in a blanket of chaos. I turned to Shoji, who was using those weird arms of his to listen for survivors. Mt. Lady, our assigned pro, was off picking up debris with Mineta. I was told to look for people with my classmate, but I would have preferred to be alone. He tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to a party store across the street. We walked carefully towards it, making sure not to alert any villains that we could possibly be nearby. Once we got inside, he let out a sigh of relief.

"I thought I heard something in here, but it must have been just one of the machines."

I crept around a corner towards where all of the slushee machines and rollers were, but they all were empty. It occurred to me that this place hadn't been in service for a few years now.

"Tentacole, what did you hear?"

He shook his head.

"I could have sworn I heard a beeping noise, like a distress signal," he said with his strange mouth arm-hand-thing. I'm not one to usually judge, but it was freaky. I shook my head reminding myself to stay on task.

A distress signal? Who in their right minds would hide here, in an empty store, and not yell for help when we walked in? Unless they were already dead...

"There might be someone injured in here. I'll take the front, you take the back."

I walked towards the cash register, and leaned over the dusty countertop. Nobody there. I scanned the first few aisles, even looking in the backrooms, but I didn't see anyone. Something was definitely wrong.

--flashback--

"Ah, should we not wait for backup?" Aoyama said.

His sweaty palms made holding onto the staircase railing tricky. Iida nodded. He stared up at Ojiro, who was already on the next floor.

The trio had agreed to go to the mall across town. It gave them a good spot to help any injured citizens, and it functioned as a lookout. However, both Aoyama and Iida hadn't considered how many flights of stairs there were. Ojiro insisted they checked every store, so soon both members of the party were totally worn out. Iida couldn't use his quirk on stairs, and Aoyama wasn't much help either, so the two were struggling to keep up with their much more versatile tailed friend.

"Hey, Ojiro! Could- Could you wait for us?" Iida yelled, clearly out of breath.

As much working out as he did, dodging debris and helping the clumsy Aoyama up off the ground quickly took it's toll. The tailed boy looked down at his friends and sighed.

"We'll never find any people like this. You two, search that floor then meet me at the roof."

Iida winced a little at being the follower for once, but he nodded and made his way back down the staircase. Aoyama took a more elegant approach and slid down the railing. The two walked in different directions, thankful to not be going up any more floors for a while.